Easy Ways to Boost Your Website and Business Ranking
If you use local business listings correctly, they can increase customer foot traffic to your door noticeably. If you don’t use them correctly, they won’t. It’s as simple as that.
One of the most important ways to use listings correctly is to get them in the right places so that they show up at the right time to lead customers to you.
Search Engine Business Profiles
The major search engines are the best places to start as you begin to build a search engine optimization strategy for your local business listings. Having an active, accurate business profile on search engines like Google and Bing and the 50+ other local listing services ensures that your business will show up in those engines’ search results and map searches when and where you want them to.
In many cases, the search engines will already have automatically built a listing for business as a result of the engine’s crawling the web looking for businesses. It’s your job to claim any existing listing as your own and then fill out the profile so that it works even better for you. Add vital information such as business hours, contact information and links to your website. Include photos of your products and customer reviews.
Listings on Review Sites
Don’t neglect to have a presence on review sites where potential customers can find vital information about your business at the same time they’re searching for recommendations from other users. These profiles and reviews can show up in search engine results as well as in geographically specific searches by customers using review apps on mobile devices.
Depending on the nature of your business, you can focus on one local search engine over another. If you’re unable to manage all the local listing services, be sure to focus on the Big Three: Google, Bing and Yelp. If you’re a restaurant or a service provider, be sure to manage your profile on Yelp. If you’re a contractor, take advantage of a profile on Angie’s List, where many customers go when they’re looking for a well-reviewed local business.
Stay on top of these profiles, reviewing them regularly to be sure that the information in them is accurate.
Use Social Media Listings
Social media profiles can also provide a useful link between your business and potential customers. Create a page for your business on Facebook, for example, and make sure the page contains complete and accurate information about your business’s location, business category, and description of your products and services. Your business is then likely to show up as a local place in search results by users, and the more recommendations and check-ins that your page gathers, the more likely you’ll be to end up in results.
Work to create a web of social media profiles to reach all corners of your potential market. If your company focuses on a business-to-business market, be sure that you’re represented on LinkedIn, and use more active time-sensitive media such as Twitter if you’re targeting a younger, socially active market.
Local Directories and Indexes
Don’t underestimate the importance of creating top listings for your business in local directories. Chambers of Commerce, the Better Business Bureau, professional organization websites, tourism sites, yellow pages and white pages listings, and city directories can all point customers to your business if you maintain listings in their indexes.
Perhaps more importantly, listings in these sites will help boost your results in search engine searches. Search engines look for citations for your business in sources like these as a way of determining how relevant your business is to their users. The more references to your business that the search engine can find, the higher it will place your listing in search results.
Next Steps
All these types of listings work together, and if you make getting on page one of Google search results a priority, you’ll have to take advantage of them all.
Contact us today to discuss how we can use our web design and SEO expertise to get you to the top of the list.
About the author: Tom Weinkle is a founder and partner of Vortex Communications, a graphic and website design firm who offers brand agency services, graphic and WordPress web design, build, troubleshooting and training services along with search optimization, social media and inbound marketing services. Based in Miami, Florida, Tom has over 25 years of experience in branding and visual communications for the healthcare, medical, law, accounting, software, financial services and banking industries.